Mitigating Runoff As Part of an Integrated Strategy for Nearshore Resource Conservation

This report first presents theoretical considerations for integrated resource management of forested watershed and nearshore resources, then estimates current economic benefits from nearshore resources (beaches and reef) as well as expected economic benefits, in the form of preserved nearshore resource benefits, from conservation of forest resources.

Endogenous Substitution Among Energy Resources and Global Warming

The theory of resource extraction has focused primarily on extraction when there is a single, homogeneous demand for the resource. In reality, however, we observe the simultaneous extraction of different resources such as oil, coal, and natural gas and multiple demands such as trasportation, residential and commercial heating, and electricity generation. This paper develops a model with multiple resources and grades and multiple demands. The model is simulated with extraction cost, estimated reserves, and energy demand data for the world economy. It is shown that if historical rates of cost reduction in the production of solar energy are maintained, more than 90 percent of the world's coal will never be used. The world will move from oil and natural gas use to solar energy. Global temperatures will rise by only about 1.5–2 degrees centigrade by the middle of the next century and then decline steadily to preindustrial levels, even without carbon taxes. These results are significantly lower than those predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and suggest that the case for global warming may be seriously overstated.

Environmental Valuation and the Hawaiian Economy

Economic planning and policy analysis are commonly criticized for their failure to properly account for adverse effects of economic development on the environment and other interactions between nature and the market economy. The limited and piecemeal curbs on land development projects, e.g. as provided by environmental impact requirements, fail to diagnose the major negative impacts of the economy on development and to direct available resources to the most serious environmental problems in a cost-effective manner.

An internal solution to an optimal control problem involving conjunctive-use of surface and groundwater may be inapplicable if water is not sufficiently fungible across space and time. We provide a more general solution and apply it to the problem of allocating a limited amount of water from the Ko‘olau mountains to two Oahu water districts separated by those mountains. The solution involves initially allocating all of the mountain water to the district supplied by groundwater but eventually allocating all of the water to the district supplied by surface water. The conditions for an internal solution hold only in the intervening years when some mountain water is allocated to each district.